Look Before You Leap

Still, there was a glittering nugget or two in the dross -- including Putin's telling response to this question: "What do you do when you don't know what to do?"

After some hesitation, Putin said: "You know, motorists have a rule: 'If you're not sure, don't pass.' The price of a mistake is very high for people engaged in my kind of activity."

Perhaps more than the piece of advice he said he would pass on from his father to his grandchildren -- "Don't lie" -- that seemed like an honest description of Putin's approach to big decisions. Most of the time.

The "look before you leap" principle can be discerned behind Putin’s actions -- or lack of action -- on issues ranging from the state's treatment of opposition leader Aleksei Navalny to Russia’s intervention in the war in Syria.

Over nearly a decade of confrontation with Navalny, the authorities have jailed him briefly many times but have refrained from handing him a long prison term -- possibly because Putin fears that would only bring one of his harshest critics more followers.

And before launching air strikes and stepping up Russia's ground operations in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2015, turning the tide of the war and increasing Moscow's clout in the region, it seems likely that Putin decided in advance that the pros outweighed the cons.

A Mess In Ukraine?

But despite his KGB experience and reputation as a competent tactician, if not a great strategist, Putin sometimes seems to shoot first and only later ask himself the question: Should I have held my fire?

The trajectory of Russia's intervention in Ukraine, and its messy results, suggest that in this case Putin the motorist pulled out to pass, saw another car bearing down at high speed, and pulled back into his own lane.

Putin driving the first truck over the Kerch Bridge to Crimea.

The maneuver left Russia with a stranglehold on Crimea that seems unlikely to be broken for decades, if ever, and with a measure of influence on Ukraine through the armed separatists it backs in the eastern region known as the Donbas.

But that is far short of what Putin seemed at one point to covet -- control over Ukraine, or at least a huge southern swath that he took for a while to calling Novorossia: New Russia.

Putin’s moves also brought successive rounds of Western sanctions on Russia, turned Moscow into a common enemy for many citizens and political factions in Ukraine, and helped start a war that -- now in its fifth year -- has killed more than 10,300 people.

A fresh bid for elusive progress in winding down that war is scheduled for June 11 in Berlin, where Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is to meet with his counterparts from Ukraine, France, and Germany -- the mediators of a 2015 Minsk peace deal that decreased fighting but failed to end it and set out a political-settlement plan that has gone largely unfulfilled.

There have been few signs pointing to a breakthrough, however, and despite his promise that Russia "will do everything we can to resolve [the conflict] within the framework of the Minsk process," Putin's remarks on Ukraine during the Direct Line show seem unlikely to increase the chances of progress.

He accused the Ukrainian governnent of "robbing its people" and warned that -- answering a question from a Russian writer who is an adviser to the separatists' leader in Donetsk -- warned that if Kyiv's forces mount an offensive in eastern Ukraine while Russia is hosting the June 14-July 15 soccer World Cup, "it will have very serious consequences for Ukrainian statehood."

Hosting the World Cup will thrust Russia into the global spotlight and seems certain to improve Putin's standing -- at least temporarily -- if it goes well.

Worries About Kim-Trump Summit

Meanwhile, though, Russia is scrambling to stay onstage amid preparations for an event that has greater geopolitical ramifications -- a June 12 meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that would be the first such meeting since the Korean War.

But beneath the show of support, Russia may have mixed feelings about the meeting -- at best.

The Kremlin fears "the prospect of a solution of the North Korea missile and nuclear issue in a strictly bilateral format" between the United States and North Korea, or the two together with South Korea, Moscow-based foreign policy analyst Vladimir Frolov wrote in an article for Republic.ru.

"This would threaten not only to clearly devalue...the narrative of the international role of Russia as a global great power, which is very important to the Kremlin, but also to create new and not very Russia-friendly...formats for the provision of security in East Asia, in which the United States and American security guarantees would play the key role," he wrote.

Steve Gutterman is news editor of RFE/RL's Central Newsroom in Prague. He has lived and worked in Russia and the former Soviet Union off and on -- mostly on -- since 1989, including postings in Moscow with the Associated Press and Reuters.

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Check out Steve Gutterman's new podcast, The Week Ahead In Russia, every Monday here or on iTunes. The Week Ahead In Russia podcast dissects significant developments and upcoming events in Moscow and beyond.​.